================================================ UPDATE LOG:

• 4 Mar 2014 by Ziquan Add node as switch for averaging score and non averaging score
• 26 Feb 2014 by Ziquan Add constraint, exploration strategy into output file name
• 24 Feb 2014 by Ziquan Add exhaustive exploration and resource constraint
• 18 Feb 2014 by Ziquan In random exploration, replace direct fitness value comparison by using averaging fitness value
• 1 Feb 2014 by Ziquan Remove <refactoring> tag, so that the function of refactoring will be expressed explicitly
• 17 Apr 2013 by Ziquan Add .trim() to ConfigReader class Use EclipseMetrics plug-in to generate a metrics folder

================================================ XML CONFIG FILE

• the root element is <simulation>.
  • <simulation> contains 1 or more <case>
    • <case> contains 1 <runs>, 1 <inf>, 1 <bias>, 1 <delta>, 0 or more <tau> and 0 or more <agent>
      • <runs> contains an integer, which indicates the number of runs of the case.
      • <inf> contains a string, which MUST BE an ABSOLUTE path to the influence matrix txt file OR a RELATIVE path to the jar files.
      • <bias> and <delta> contain values between 0 and 1, which indicate the amount of initial uncertainty and the among of changes after shocks respectively.
      • <tau> contains an integer, which indicates the time to have a shock. Multiple shocks need to have multiple <tau> elements.
      • <agent> has a type to be defined. E.g., <agent type="foo">. <agent> must has a UNIQUE type within one <case>, however, <agent>s in different <case>s can have the same type.
      • <agent> contains 1 <num>, 1 <power> and 1 <plan>.
        • <num> contains an integer, which indicates the total number of that type of agents with within that case
        • <power> contains an integer, which indicates the processing power of that type of agent
        • <plan> contains the agent's implementation plan, E.g., (0,1)(2,3) when N=4, (0,1,3)(2,5,4) when N=6
        • <constraint> contains values in (0, 1], which indicates the amount of constraint resource. E.g., 1 for no resource constraint and 0.5 for half resource constraint.
        • <exhaustive> contains ‘true’ or ‘false’, which indicates the agent's exploration strategy. ’true’ for exhaustive greedy exploration; ‘false’ for random exploration.
        • <refactoring> is removed (did contain 'true' or 'false', which indicates the scope of refactoring process. 'true' for refactoring all implemented elements including the elements in the current iteration; 'false' for refactoring all implemented elements excluding the elements in the current iteration.)

================================================ NK_run

NK_run takes only one argument which is the path (absolute or relative path) to an xml config file.

E.g., >> java -jar NK_run.jar ./config/conf1.xml

• The output files of NK_run are stored in the same directory as the jar file.

• The output files are txt files. One txt file is for one agent type under one case. In other words, each output file corresponds to one <agent> element node in the xml config file.

• The output txt file name is formatted as: "o_n" + the number N + "k" + the number K + "b" + bias + "d" + delta + “c” + constraint + ”” + exploration strategy + “_”+ the agent type + ".txt"

• The format in the output txt file is as follows: SEED, AGENT, TIMESTAMP, SHOCK, ITERATION, PERFORMANCE, MAX, MIN

• IMPORTANT NOTE 1 There are more than one influence matrices with the same N and K. Maybe you will differentiate them with different file names, e.g., "n4k2_1.txt", "n4k2_2.txt". However, the output file name could be the same, because of the format above. Therefore, please differentiate them using different agent types.

• IMPORTANT NOTE 2 New generated output file will not rewrite the original file (if existed) with the same name. Instead, the contents will be appended to the original file (if existed).

================================================ NK_landscape

NK_landscape takes 3 arguments, xml config file, shockNum and stepNum.

E.g., >> java -jar NK_landscape.jar ./config/conf1.xml 0 0

• NK_landscape prints the landscape fitness values (for locations from 000…00, 000…01 to 111…11) line by line
• NK_landscape only inspects the influence matrix (with its delta, bias and tau) in the FIRST <case> from the xml config file
• Landscape is generated from the randomly generated fitness contribution values. The seed of the random generator is taken from the <runs> element, so you may want to change <runs> to get different landscapes.